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Why Trump Is Right to Withdraw Troops

Donald Trump has announced that he is bringing home
America’s troops from Syria just two years after he was
elected president. His plan to end one of America’s many wars
prompted a mob to gather outside the White House, pitchforks at the
ready.

The mob wasn’t made up of angry farmers or workers.
Instead, the feverish crowd constituted Washington’s war
party: ivory tower think-tankers, editorialists promoting perpetual
war, wannabe commanders-in-chief eager to launch their next
democracy crusade, and politicians who collected draft deferments
when their lives were on the line—but who now see the need
for the United States to “exercise leadership.”

The cacophonous criticism of the president’s decision within the
Beltway may be the best evidence of his wisdom. Syria is not
America’s war. Washington’s security interests always were minimal.
The humanitarian tragedy in the country has been overwhelming, but
it is beyond America’s ability to fix it.

Most directly, the president’s critics complain that the
Islamic State is not yet eradicated from the earth. Wrote the New
Yorker’s Robin Wright, “long-term stability is still
far from guaranteed against a force that remains a powerful
idea—both in war-ravaged Syria and throughout the volatile
region—even as its military wing is decimated.”
However, the United States can’t fix the underlying causes of
radicalism. Moreover, the Islamic State’s long list of
enemies—Iraq, Syria, Turkey, Jordan, Gulf States, Iran,
Russia—should be able to handle the aftermath. America should
not do everything for everyone forever.

Withdrawal from Syria
will be Trump’s first practical application of a true “America
First” foreign policy. It has been long overdue.

Washington’s “usual suspects” came with a
gaggle of bizarrely ambitious alternative objectives to justify
America’s continued military presence. Why remain in a
multisided civil war filled with bad participants and choices? Why
stay to protect the Kurds, satisfy the Turks, limit the Iranians,
cow the Syrians, moderate the Russians, and perhaps cure the common
cold?

Congress has not authorized military action in Syria, even
against the Islamic State. The authorization for the utilization of
military force passed after 9/11 was directed against Al Qaeda, not
new groups which did not then exist and did not participate in the
attacks. That AUMF cannot be stretched to cover Syria, Iran,
Russia, Turkey, or anyone else.

Of course, Congress had no reason to authorize force in Syria,
which is not a security problem for America. The U.S. prospered for
decades while a hostile and even stronger Syrian Arab Republic was
allied with the Soviet Union. Would it be good if Bashar al-Assad
was a warm, loyal, devoted ally like, say, Saudi Arabia’s Mohammed
bin Salman? Sure (well, probably). But the fact that Assad is not
isn’t a cause for military intervention. As a superpower, America
has interests all over the world. As a superpower, most of them
aren’t particularly important. Very few are worth war.

Russia’s involvement in Syria doesn’t matter. Washington is
allied with Turkey, Egypt, Jordan, Israel, and the Gulf States. The
United States shares influence in Iraq and Lebanon. Moscow has a
close relationship with Syria, a long-time ally now a wreck of its
former self. Russia has some clout with Iran, an overstretched,
uneasy partner at best. Who is winning the Russo-American contest?
Americans can sleep at night.

The Tehran regime is malicious, but probably less so than
Washington’s Saudi partner, which has destabilized the region
through its war in Yemen, abducted Lebanon’s prime minister, and
supported fundamentalist Wahhabism and radical groups. Despite the
administration’s bizarre fixation on Iran, the latter does not
threaten America, which is multiple degrees more powerful. Israel,
which possesses multiple nuclear weapons, is also able to defend
itself. Iranian activity in Syria does not diminish the lethality
of Israel’s deterrent.

Perennial war-hark Sen. Lindsey Graham complained that the
pull-out would “be seen by Iran and other bad actors as a
sign of American weakness in the efforts to contain Iranian
expansion.” Actually, supporting a major ally under attack
isn’t really “expansion.” (Washington does it all
the time!) Anyway, plenty of other nations have reason to help
constrain Tehran, whose modest influence is most felt in divided
and war-ravaged states. But they certainly prefer not to act if the
United States is willing to do their dirty work.

National Security Adviser John Bolton insisted that the United
States was “not going to leave as long as Iranian troops are
outside Iranian borders, and that includes Iranian proxies and
militias.” This fixation on Tehran has badly distorted U.S.
Middle East policy. Iran’s relationship with Syria may not be
to America’s liking, but it is long-standing and exists at
the invitation of Syria’s legitimate government. Both
Damascus and Tehran have far more at stake in maintaining their
relationship than the United States does in disrupting their
ties—especially since Washington has threatened both
countries militarily. America won’t be able to force anyone
home.

To presume that Kurdish forces, at the behest of a small
American presence, would permanently block Syrian-Iranian
cooperation when the greatest and most immediate threat against
them comes from Ankara is, well, fantastic. It’s more likely
that a Syrian-Kurdish modus vivendi would better protect some
degree of Kurdish autonomy from Turkish attack.

A few charming souls complain that Washington’s withdrawal
would leave the Kurds vulnerable to Turkey. For instance,
Bloomberg’s editorial board blithely insisted that
“the White House should be saying no to” Ankara’s
invasion plan,” instead of leaving “America’s
best ally in the fight against Islamic State at the mercy of
Erdogan, and of Syrian forces backed by Russian and Iranian
military power.” However, Washington’s objections did
not stop Turkey’s earlier operations against the Kurds, whom
Ankara views as a serious threat to Turkey’s territorial
integrity (remember the U.S. Civil War?).

The Washington Post complained of “the stab in
the back,” but the United States never promised Syria’s
Kurds military protection, which would have to run forever. Indeed,
Washington already made that strategic choice when it did not
protect Kurdistan from retaliation by Iraq, Iran, and Turkey after
the latter held an independence referendum. Washington also made
little to no effort to block decades of brutal military operations
against the Kurds in Turkey or protect them in the assault on Afrin
and surrounding territory in Syria earlier this year. The Pentagon
cannot justify a permanent garrison illegally occupying Syria amid
a civil war to protect an unofficial militia from attack by both
the legally legitimate government and a neighboring NATO ally.

Hope also burns eternal in some hearts that by effectively
dismantling the country—illegally occupying roughly 30
percent of Syria’s territory along with much of its oil
resources—Washington can pressure Assad to step down, accept
elections, or otherwise become the “reformer” that
Hillary Clinton once proclaimed him to be. However, Assad is more
secure today than at any other point since the civil war erupted.
In August I visited Aleppo and Homs, as well as the Damascus
suburbs once held by insurgents. All were under the Syrian
military’s control. The American presence is inconvenient,
but having survived the worst of the civil war, why would Assad
quit now?

Then there is the oft-repeated concern for stability. Which the
United States favors, at least when it is not invading Iraq,
ousting Libya’s government, sanctioning Iran, and backing
recklessly aggressive Saudi interventions. In any case,
America’s small presence cannot stabilize the country or
region: political change is necessary to reform the underlying
conditions, while training local security forces in Syria could
trigger another stage in the ongoing civil war. Former U.S.
ambassador to Syria Theodore Kattouf has acknowledged to The New Yorker
that current “U.S. troops levels are insufficient to
otherwise change the non-ISIS facts on the ground.” Genuine
stability requires addressing Damascus.

Of course, Trump’s critics play the usual rhetorical
games. Withdrawing means “turning over” the country to
one or more bad actors, as if Syria was America’s to give
away. Those who demand a permanent presence conveniently ignore the
lack of a legal basis for even temporary intervention. And
objectives—such as thwarting Iranian, Russian, and Syrian
misbehavior—are stated without explaining how a couple
thousand Americans would achieve them. The ever-hysterical Sen.
Graham complained of “devastating consequences for our
nation, the region, and throughout the world.” Actually, the
Mideast matters far less these days, and would diminish in
importance still further if Washington did not make that dismal
assembly of nations central to American foreign and military
policy.

Graham also denounced President Trump for his “Obama-like
decision,” the ultimate slur from such a war-happy
neoconservative. Charles Lister of the Middle East Institute
complained that Trump’s decision “could be worse”
than the withdrawal from Iraq since Syria is in worse shape. Other
Republicans also pointed to the Iraqi pullout, ignoring the fact
that Obama hewed to George W. Bush’s agenda and timetable.
And the troops could not stay without a Status of Forces Agreement,
which Bush was unable to negotiate because Iraqi support was
lacking. Additionally, a continuing American presence would not
have prevented violence; rather, U.S. troops would have been
targeted by Shia extremists as well as Sunni insurgents and
terrorists. Responsibility for ISIS’s rise lies in Baghdad,
not Washington.

Nevertheless, the president’s detractors remain
inconsolable. Tom Rogan, an ever-hawkish columnist for the
Washington Examiner , proclaimed the “outsize
security and political benefits” of America’s
“military footprint” in Syria. In fact, the presence is
all cost, further entangling Washington in multiple Middle Eastern
conflicts, even creating the potential for military clashes with
Turkish, Russian, Iranian, and Syrian forces. It brings to mind
President Ronald Reagan turning American civilian and military
personnel into targets by intervening in Lebanon’s civil war.
With no critical U.S. interests at stake in Syria, this policy is
not just bad; it is stupid.

Washington’s overall objective should be to bring peace to
America, not to micromanage the conflicts of other nations. Lister
complained that the president “just told Iran and all of our
regional allies we don’t believe in sticking it out to
achieve our foreign policy objectives.” Sometimes those
objectives are not worth the cost of what would essentially be a
permanent war. Withdrawal from Syria would be the president’s
first practical application of a true “America First”
foreign policy. It has been long overdue. Once the president
finishes with Syria, he should turn to Yemen and Afghanistan.